TWO OPPOSE DEVELOPER'S OFFER TO PAY PLANNER

PARKLAND -- Two city commissioners are disturbed that Parkland may hire an economic planner who will end up being paid $38,000 by Coral Ridge Properties, a development company.

City Manager Harry Mertz is recommending at a 7 p.m. meeting today that the city hire Paul Tischler, head of Tischler & Associates in Bethesda, Md., to help city officials prepare a capital improvements plan. The plan, which must be approved by state officials, outlines major building projects the city will undertake in the next five years. It also identifies ways the city can pay for the projects.

Coral Ridge Properties, the city's largest developer, asked Mertz to consider hiring Tischler. The developers want commissioners to approve an agreement that says the developers will reimburse the city for Tischler's services.

"This is an embarrassing position," Mayor Sal Pagliara said. "The city should pay its own bills. I don't think we should be going to them."

Pagliara and Commissioner Bobbi Pugliese were the only two commissioners who opposed the deal when developers proposed it at a meeting last week.

Pugliese said, "It's inappropriate for the city to take gifts like this."

The mayor and Pugliese said arrangements like this one have backfired in the past. The developer, they said, may expect city commissioners to do things its way since the developer is paying the bill.

Pugliese and Pagliara said the city had problems last year when Coral Ridge Properties paid the city $50,000 to pay for the services of Kelly Carpenter Craft, a planner who worked on the city's comprehensive plan.

Commissioners made several changes in the original plan, a blueprint for growth.

The developers were upset about some of the changes, especially ones that set up provisions for horse trails and strict requirements about how much land developers must give to the city for open space.

"We just couldn't agree on many things, and after that the deannexation trouble started," Pugliese said.

Last year, Coral Ridge Properties teamed up with landowner Hamilton Forman and asked state legislators to remove the land developers own west of Riverside Drive on the grounds the city was not providing adequate services.

Legislators finally agreed to put some of the land, 1,800 acres west of Pine Island Road, in a reserve area for five years.

But Mertz and other commissioners do not see negative repercussions from the arrangement with Tischler.

Mertz said Coral Ridge Properties has just as much reason to be concerned about the city's capital improvements plan as city officials.

Most of the projects the city is planning, such as a new city hall, will be built on land in west Parkland owned by the developers.

Coral Ridge Properties "has just as much to gain or lose from this plan as we do," Mertz said.